A sudden, dramatic arrest unfolded in front of a woman parked in a Burnaby mall parking lot Tuesday afternoon.
Elaine McRitchie was inside her car waiting for her husband in the Brentwood mall parking lot near the Willingdon Avenue entrance at about 2:45 p.m. when she heard a series of loud bangs
“I thought it was bombs going off,” she told Burnaby NOW. “It was so loud, and then there was just smoke all over the place, and all of a sudden, through the smoke, there’s like 15 cops. It was crazy.”
About seven police vehicles, most unmarked, had suddenly descended on the area without sirens, according to McRitchie, and a man that she had observed walking through the parking lot with a coffee in his hand was on the ground in cuffs.
“I had no idea what was happening,” she said. “It was so terrifying just to all of a sudden have this stuff happening around me.”
Burnaby RCMP said the operation was conducted by the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, the province’s anti-gang agency.
Burnaby NOW has reached out to the agency for more information.
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